Blech!

So, some time ago, I had bumped into JY at the salad bar in the cafeteria and she was looking for the balsamic vinaigrette. JY is one of my role models: she's a mom with two kids, a kick-ass scientist and very straight-forward and very friendly. I gave her the one I normally use, which is in one of those big plastic bottles next to Ranch, Italian etc. She literally shuddered and said, "Oh God, I am morally opposed to any dressing that has sugar and high fructose corn syrup. I'm looking for the smaller glass bottle". 

I'd been pondering this for a while and so yesterday I thought I too should be ultra-healthy (forget the fact that I'm eating a salad for lunch! Instead of French fries!), and shunned the plastic bottle and hunted for the small glass bottle which just has vinegar with some grape juice in it. I liberally doused my salad in the stuff and with a feeling of extreme virtue, tried to eat it. 

It was AWFUL! Oh. My. God! My whole lunch was spoiled because of that excessively healthy nonsense. 

I'm going to stick with the unhealthy dressing from now on.

Our first family camping trip

Ram has long been hankering to go camping. I would demur. While he waxed eloquent about starlit nights, the early dawn birdsong and the call of the wild, my thoughts would be depressingly pragmatic: what about food, I would ask. What about kids squalling at night because they haven’t gotten enough to eat? Or what about running water? While he might bask under the evening sun, I might be the only one running around trying to get us set up.

But in these worst-case scenarios, there is no concept of a team. It gives the impression of a vague but ruthless dictator (Ram), and his hapless, chicken-without-a-head wife. But reality is different. Six years of marriage has honed us into a pretty good team and each of us has learned how to work the other into our way of thinking. While Ram may disdain to talk about the mundanities of real life while envisioning a perfect holiday, he also knows that I will not enter into an agreement without straightening out the details of those mundanities. And reciprocally, I have learned not to bring in mundanities while talking about something broad like an overall vision for a holiday, and keep them for their place in the nitty-gritty planning. Or at least, in theory, that’s how we work. If I am hungry, all bets are off and our discussion usually ends in a brawl. 

So this time when Memorial Day rolled around, we decided to take the plunge and camp out… somewhere. As to where, we still hadn’t decided by Saturday afternoon. I leaned towards the safe bet of Morraine State Park, while Ram thought we ought to aim for a more ambitious first project. He thought Cook County Forest, about 3 hours from Pittsburgh, might be it. 

We hit on Presque Isle almost by accident. As we were driving back home from breakfast, a guy on the radio was swooning over the delights at Lake Erie and Ram mused, "Presque Isle is pretty close to Lake Erie". "Isle?" asked I. "You mean a real island in the lake? We have to go there! Imagine camping by the water! We can sleep to the sound of waves! It will be like being in Goa!"

Presque Isle State Park

And that was how we started out on our first camping trip. In the midst of Ram's thrilled explorations of tents and camp stoves, we made a detailed plan of what we would eat and when and how. By the time I wrote out lists of things we had to take, things we already had, and things we needed to buy and by the time we bought all these things, it was already late evening. We pondered on whether to puff full steam ahead and drive down to Erie anyway, and then set up camp at night when a rare streak of common sense struck us. "I know!" we exclaimed at the same time. "We should practice setting up the camp and using the stove in our backyard tonight!" 

Back home we went. While I jogged Durga on my knee and read out the instructions on how to put up a tent, Ram and Ani attached the poles and the ropes and sure enough! We had a beautiful red tent, spacious and airy, with a jaunty flag atop it. "Why don't you figure out the camp stove and I'll start cooking on our real stove" I said to Ram. "Kids are getting hungry". If there's one thing I really dislike, it's hungry kids. Kids that are otherwise awesome, sweet, sensitive and smart turn into howling, unreasonable, uncontrollable banshees. Durga's still at the age where I can stick a milk bottle into her mouth and she'll be quiet. But Ani requires more cajoling. 

Kids fed, tent up, cooking stove up and roaring beautifully. We looked to be in good shape for our trip.

The next day, we had breakfast and started out, the radio playing great music, the kids humming along, the man a bit puffy-eyed due to caffeine withdrawal. We stopped for coffee and gas. Ani said, "Me! Me! I want to feed the car!" so I let him. Durga watched, transfixed at the sight of her big brother wielding a gas pump. "Waah!" she let out, pumping her hands, wanting to come out and join the fun. I caught her eye, fixed her with a gimlet stare and said, "Durga. The important thing today is the camp. All this is minor. Stay where you are". She subsided, much to my astonishment. 

And then we were finally, really off! The day was beautiful, sunny, the skies a clear deep blue. Summer at last! About an hour into the drive, Ram tried to put on the AC. "God, it's so bloody hot!" he complained. I gazed at him in false sympathy and mocked "Is a bit of heat too much for your baby skin? Is our man a widdy-biddy Amreekan baby?! Be a man of the great hot plains of Kolar, Ram!" This is a standing routine between us. I hate the cold and he hates the heat. I consider myself a true daughter of Chennai, of heat and humidity. Ram, on the other hand, loves the snow, sleet and frost.

Kids fell asleep halfway through the drive. Ram and I talked about research, our careers and co-workers, and plans for trips for the remainder of the year.

At the first sight of the lake, we cheered, waking up the kids. We registered at the office at Sara's Campgrounds, parked the car and went to the beach to pick a site for our tent. It was pretty crowded. I think, when we started out, Ram and I had this image of camping as being essentially a solitary pursuit. My own idea was a scene from Parent Trap (when Lindsey Lohan was young, clean and cute) where there's a single tent, a blue lake and an endless stretch of human-less forest. Reality was more carnival-like. A radio somewhere nearby was loudly playing Adele. A pot-bellied, sunburnt old gent strolled by and said, "If you're thinking of pitching a tent here, don't forget to grab a fire pit". "Huh?" we blinked. "You know, a fire pit", he said, gesturing towards a short iron cylinder about a foot in diameter. "You start a fire in there and it stays there". "Oh.. wow.. sure. A fire would be nice. Umm… what would we need the fire for, exactly?" this was me at my brilliant best. "Well you just light it. You get some logs right by there. It's five bucks at the store for 5 pieces of wood. Daylight robbery, if you ask me. Anyway, you get those logs and you start the fire. See? I've got mine going", he said, pointing to a large fiery ring next to his tent. His wife, in a little bikini, waved, pointed to Durga and said, "Awwww so cute!" I smiled at her. I like everybody who say nice things about my kids. Mind made up, I said, "Wow! That's great! Ram, get that fire pit. This nice gentleman here says we need one". "Errr..", said Ram, not exactly sure what we were getting into, but too polite to say so in front of the man, who introduced himself as Mark. "And I'm Varsha", I said cheerily. "That's like Marsha, but with a V". "Hahaha!" laughed Mark, as though I said something very witty. "Put up your tent and I'll help you get a bench", he said. 

"I wonder why we need a fire", Ram said as we made our way back to car. "It's pretty hot… and it's the middle of the day. And we have a cooking stove". 

"Oh well. We couldn't have said no to him. Poor man. He was being so nice! Hey, plus, he's going to help us get a bench. That'll be useful while cooking"

So we unloaded our tent, plonked the kids on the sand and told them to dig around, spread out the tarp, weighed it down with stones from the beach, and put up the tent. Ram finished it by flinging out the canopy on top of the tent with a flourish. "You gotta tie up that canopy!" yelled Mark from his campsite a few feet away. 

"Err… tie it up where?" 

"To the stakes!"

"Oh right! Hey look Varsh, now it looks just like the picture!"

I was calming down the baby. Ani had flung some sand into the wind, which went into Durga's eye, who promptly began howling. "No flinging, Ani! No blowing it either! Dig it and keep it to the ground! How would you like it if I did that to you?"

The sight of the erected tent did wonders to soothe tempers and the kids scrambled into the tent in perfect accord with each other. 

"Now for food! We can't cook now, but let's go to some place nearby and get something to eat", I said with an anxious eye at the time. I grabbed a couple of bananas, a bag of dates and some water to tide the kids (and me) over till we actually got the food.

From the Mexican joint where we had lunch, we drove down to Presque Isle State Park. Ani had a hankering to bike and I had a hankering for a boat ride. We debated and decided that we should boat first and then bike, since it was so hot. But alas! No boats at that time- apparently they only had them at 11am or at sunset. Tired of driving, I declared we should all walk back to the bike store, rent a bike to come back to the car and that I would drive the car and kids back while Ram rode the bike back to the store. Seems a bit convoluted, no? It didn't seem so at the time and needless to say, it didn't work out terribly well, as you will see further along.  And so it was we sent out on what we expected would be a mile-long hike, but in reality was more like two and a half miles. Ani, being the trooper that he is, walked nearly the whole distance. Durga, since she too has adventurous blood in her, decided that she wanted to walk as well. Since she doesn't walk by herself, this involved a laborious dance where I would hold either one or both her hands and she would toddle along, sometimes slipping, sometimes sliding. We took a LONG time to complete that hike.

Much to Ram's delight, we also happened to observe a whole number of birds we had never seen before. We saw the Baltimore Oriole (and its nest!) and a Cedar Waxwing. 

Baltimore Oriole

Cedar Waxwing

But the best part were the warblers. Have you taken a walk in a forest path where there are tall trees and you can see little birds, smaller than sparrows, flit by? You might be able to make out a dash of color, but the birds never stay long enough for you to observe them. You can definitely hear them. These are warblers and they are beautiful, tiny and really hard to find. Ram has been trying for months to observe these little guys and hadn't been too successful until Presque Isle. In Presque, there were so many warblers that they were practically flying in front of us. We saw many American yellow warblers and in one case, a nest housing a warbler too! Three little female redstarts landed at my feet quarreling and chirruping loudly. 

Yellow warbler

                      

Female redstart

What makes Presque easily so unique is that in those 2.5 miles that we walked, there were at least 3 or 4 different types of terrain: there were flat grassy lands, there were marshes, there were tall wooded trees and there was the lake and its shore. Each terrain had a completely different set of birds. 

Ani was excited by the large spider webs we passed. We peered down into many of them, counting the insects captured. We saw a pupa of some unidentified worm. At these stops, Durga would sit down on the ground and pluck leaves and twigs and throw them in the air. 

After our long walk, with Ram in the heights of ornithological ecstasy and me growing increasingly stressed about everything, we finally reached the bike store. And learned that they were not going rent any more bikes for the day. Yaarrgh! Now what? "Please, could one of you just give my husband a lift to the boat center? It's only 2 miles away!" I pleaded, to no avail. The bike guys gave me the phone number of the park ranger, to ask for help. I did so (marveling that my phone was still working and hadn't yet achieved its usual state of death), again to no avail. Ram started making noises about quickly walking back the 2.5 miles to get the car. But I spotted an Indian couple walking nearby. If there was ever a time to exploit the Indian connection, this was it. I grabbed Durga (a baby always makes a case for pity that much stronger) and accosted them. I blurted out the whole story and asked, "Do you think, if you could possibly, drive my husband a couple of miles down to get the car?" They initially demurred: oh but we have a tour that's going to be starting soon. But I wasn't about to let something like that stand in my way. "But the tour's in 20 minutes, no? If you leave now, you'll be back within 15". I can be pretty ruthless when it comes to getting my way to food.

So long story short. They drove Ram to the car and drove back in time for their trip. Hurray! Then we got to the camp; the sun was just about to set. I made Ram some tea, and hot chocolate for the rest of us. We watched the sun set on Lake Erie, a beautiful sight. We spotted Mark and his wife at the water's edge. He waved and walked back towards us. He said, "Well, I almost forgot the bottle of champagne!" Apparently, he and his wife come here multiple times every year, and have been doing so for the past fifteen years and at every sunset by the lake, they open a bottle of champagne and drink to the sunset. What a nice tradition! 

Then while I took the kids for their various peeing and pooping jobs, Ram cut vegetables for our dinner and I made pasta with broccoli, ginger, garlic and oregano with alfredo sauce. Pretty fancy for a pair of newbie campers, eh?

As we were eating, the night advanced and it became darker and darker. Then, the fireworks began! This was such a pleasant surprise! I guess they had them for Memorial Day. They were beautiful. We ate under the light of the fireworks. Then, we got ready for the night. The thing with making your kids walk 2.5miles is that they eat without complaint and they drop off to sleep without a fuss!

So if you're an avid (or merely interested) birdwatcher, here's the low-down on Presque:
Terrains present:
Marshy land
Forests with tall trees
Shoreline with lake
Grassy flat stretches

Birds we observed:
Baltimore Orioles
Cedar Waxwings
Many red-shouldered blackbirds
Many cowbirds, catbirds and Eastern phoebes
American yellow warblers
Redstarts
Some cormorants on the way to Presque

The Moral Trickiness of the Ramayana

Rama and his story have been hovering around in my head these days because that's been the story that I tell Ani during dinner time.

Most Hindus would find offense at the thought of criticizing Rama, one of the avatars of one of our chief Gods, Vishnu. The Ramayana itself in all its flowery Sanskrit prose waxes eloquent about what a perfect man Rama is, in his form, morals, actions and thoughts.

So, sometimes I think I should narrate the Ramayana to Ani the way I heard it: as though Rama's actions and thoughts cannot be questioned. Yet, the texts that form the basis of all Hindu philosophy, the Upanishads, are anything but reverential towards any deity. They are factual, logical and make conclusions based on evidence, all the while acknowledging that there is something greater and more mysterious than what we can ever comprehend. 

When I recall that, I don't feel too compelled to tell my son Ani about Rama the way I heard it as a child: as though he were a deity and whatever the only way to think about his story is the way the Ramayana proclaims it. Because once he grows up and starts thinking about it independently, of what the story has to teach, he'll find that there are all sorts of moral dilemmas cropping up. To think of Ramayana in a literal, "he is the God and we have to blindly accept his story" way would not only vastly underestimate it, but also lead to all sorts of dangerous thinking. 

Yesterday night, we paused at Vali's killing. For those not in the know, here's a brief precis: Rama's wife Sita has been kidnapped. He and his brother Lakshmana are looking for her. They come across Sugriva in the jungle on their travels, who promises to help them, in turn for Rama helping him become the king of Kishkinda. The current king of Kishkinda is Sugriva's brother Vali. Rama agrees; Sugriva challenges Vali to a fight; Rama hides in the bushes, and while Vali is thus engaged in fighting Sugriva, kills him with an arrow to his back. 

Vali, while dying, cries out in anguish at the unfairness of these tactics. "If you had come to me for help in seeking your wife, Rama", says he, "I would have instantly helped you, with no conditions. You are supposed to be a king among men, the most perfect of all, and yet you  fought me in an underhanded and devious way and killed me with a blow to my back when I was not expecting it". 

And then Rama replies with something like, "I asked Sugriva for his help first and he offered it immediately. And this was the price of his offer. I could not, in any conscience, reject it. This is the price you have to pay, Vali, for having banished Sugriva from your kingdom*"

* Long story short: Sugriva thinks Vali is dead after he goes to fight some bad guys. He goes back to Kishkinda, crowns himself king, marries Vali's widow and adopts his son as his own. Vali comes back, enraged to find Sugriva has taken over just about everything that should belong to him, defeats Sugriva in a fight and banishes him.

Hmm.. is it just me, or does anyone else find Rama's reply rather unconvincing? I can't help feeling that Vali is quite justified in his laments. 

In Nabokov's Lolita, the writing is sly, insidious. You keep reading it, and you're completely sympathizing with the narrator and you feel, yeah, it's totally okay for him to be lusting after a child. It's not until you put the book down and escape Nabokov's web of words that you suddenly realize that the writer has made you complicit, that he has tricked you into completely agreeing with something terrible.

Sometimes I think Ramayana is like that. You go through a few hundred pages of Rama's greatness, his nobility yada yada yada (by the way, is his nobility ever shown in any real instance? Or is just always averred to be true, but with no proof? Sure he's supposed to be a great looking guy- with extraordinarily long hands "that come up to his knees", and he's real handy (haha) with a bow and arrow, and he's a dutiful son, but what else? How is he noble?), then you come across these sudden instances which strike a totally jarring note.

Now, if Rama had said, "Yes Vali. Shit man, you're right. What I did was totally not right, but I'm desperate. I need help, and Sugriva was the first to offer it and I grabbed hold of it as quickly as I could. I'm really sorry", now that makes sense. And in fact, it makes him more real and human. It also shows that Rama is aware of his faults. Reading something like this makes someone who worships Rama think about the times when they do something that isn't quite right and that doesn't sit well with the conscience.

But by getting off on to a high horse, "Well Vali, all that has happened to you is really your fault. If you had only been a better brother....", Rama shows himself to be not so perfect after all. Kind of petty, really. And, in fact, deaf to conscience.

So, how best to put all this forth to an enraptured 4 year old? I toyed briefly with the idea of making Rama confess that he hadn't been all that great after all, by molding Rama into some image that I would like him to be. But ultimately, I went with the truth...the Ramayana version, that is. But I added a couple of "Hmm.. so do you think that was particularly right of Rama to do, Ani? Killing someone who wasn't expecting to be hit in the back with an arrow like that?" Ani obediently shook his head, but was that because he truly felt it was wrong, but because I clearly expected it of him? Who knows?

Couple of moral dilemmas coming up in the Ramayana, and I need to think about how to put it forth to Ani. One is Vibhishana's defection from Ravana's side to Rama's and the other, of course, is the biggie: the supposed banishment of Sita by Rama after he rescues her. "Supposed" because it's not actually part of the original Ramayana, but is thought to have been tacked on to the epic at a later stage. Oh, and a third one: Sita's trial of fire after her rescue to prove to the world that she is still indeed "pure". 

Poor Sita. Can't catch a break: kidnapped first, then refuses all of Ravana's enticements and never sits foot into his house, lives outside under a tree for all those months, refuses Hanuman's aid to get rescued and instead waits for Rama to avenge her kidnapping, and THEN, despite all the evidence (Hanuman, all of her guards, practically every citizen of Lanka) showing that she never shared Ravana's bed, she still had to put up with all sorts of humiliations and nonsensical tests to prove her purity. Jeez. 

The Malaysian Airlines Mystery

Oh my gosh, this theory is heart-pounding! It's diabolical and brilliant. And it might just be true.

Is there anybody in the world who has not been boggled and captivated by the MH370 story?
Prayers to those poor folk aboard that plane....

Durga

Hurray! My little baby girl turns 1 tomorrow!

Little Durgoose, when you grow up and discover this blog, feel free to treat it with appropriate filial disdain. And always remember that mummy wants only happiness and good health for you forever.

No Man's Land

People get confused by postdoctoral research fellowships.... and nobody gets more confused about them than postdocs.
Postdocs are, by all accounts, the slavish workhorses of the academic research industry. As a postdoc, you:
a) get paid lower than staff;
b) don't get perks enjoyed by staff, like parking or  8-hour workdays or accessible child care or free food on Employee Appreciation Day (gimme at least a cupcake, dammit!)
c) don't get no respec' from nobody
d) don't get any recognition from lay public when you tell them what you are (huh? postdoc? you mean you're not a real doctor?)
e) are nowhere close to being faculty, so let's not even talk about how you don't get faculty perks
f) aren't permanent, so don't count in university- or institute- census counts
g) are expected to move on, but are given no training in how to do so
h) are expected to bring in grant money, but see (b)

The Higher-Ups will, no doubt, benevolently smile and say that all this provides incentive for postdocs hurry the heck up with their training and move on... okay then Higher-Ups: why do residents get paid more than we do? How come their training has clear goals and expectations and milestones?
Sure, they save a few lives here and now, but I will save millions of lives in 20 years. Gimme that money!

So postdocs, I realize I'm hardly one to dispense with advice, being very much in the same boat as the rest of you, but here's my two cents: You don't owe anybody anything. Stay in the job as long as you feel you are getting value out of it, leave as soon as you can. You may ask, "But Varsha! Leave where? And how? We are over-educated, overly book-smart, but we have no clue how to find a job in real life! And all our contacts are postdocs too!"

To which I shall reply, "Use thy postdoc for getting all this stuff! Create an alter ego and build skills that are useful for getting real jobs, not temporary scientist positions. You're getting paid peanuts, and you might as well use the time and money for advancing your goals, without alienating your boss". Don't get me wrong, some bosses are amazingly great (like mine, for example). But can he provide you a job for the next 10 or 15 years? Most likely not.

So, let me take my own advice and get cracking....

To frost or not to frost

My attitude to cake is undergoing an insidious, not-so-subtle, and possibly permanent change.

When I first started to bake regularly, about a couple of years ago, once Ani got old enough to get excited by it, I was all for low-fat, low-sugar versions. I would assiduously study lipid profiles of various oils and butters, check out glycemic indices of various sweeteners and experiment with whole-wheat, instead of all-purpose, flour and so on.

And I would never make frosting.

Have you ever tried making frosting? It's very easy: take a gazillion pounds of the fattiest substance you can find, and add a gazillion kilograms of powdered sugar (if you don't have confectioners'.. in which case, add some corn starch to the mix). Beat the heck out of it and voila! It's a living, breathing, sinfully tempting nightmare to anyone in the least bit artery-diameter-conscious.

My healthy, virtuously naked cakes had varying degrees of success- sometimes spectacularly amazing (did you know that you can replace butter/oil and eggs altogether with whole milk yogurt? or a ripe avocado?); at other times, not for the faint-hearted (have you ever tried adding millet flour, or ragi, as it is known in India, to cookies or cakes? Unless you have a penchant for chipped teeth, don't add millet flour ever to anything that needs to be baked).

In the past few months though, my craving for frosting has drastically increased (as has my waist-line). Maybe I'm falling sick? Maybe I'm secretly stressed out? Maybe my insulin levels are out of whack? Can I excuse myself on grounds of being merely human?

I used to cheat: I would make frost-free cakes at home, but sneak in a decadent frosting-covered delight for lunch from the cafeteria. Then, my slide towards cake-perfidy accelerated: I have started making frosting up my cakes at home: chocolate ganache, buttercream, strawberry cream! Yum!

Much to my amazement, Ani doesn't like it. He always gobbles up the frosting when we buy cake outside, but he absolutely will not eat whatever I make at home. He insists that it is not healthy. I pause momentarily out of shame.

At least Ani's admonitions have the effect of making me think twice about making off some insane kingdom of frosting, as I wish I could sometimes.